III. On the Heights of Rock Bottom
A Primer on the Art of Bouncing Back
Of all of life’s predicaments, are any more poignant than those in which we are the obstacle to what we desire?
Problems that comes from elsewhere can be shaken off as accidents, but here, as Wilde once said, is the “sting of life”.
The need for dignity and to feel on no less than an equal footing with others is threatened in such a situation, as sometimes is the possibility of love. “I am not enough” - this realization, particularly when surrounded by others who seem to be, has a bite.
Is it any wonder than that there is a resistance in most to sitting with such a thought?
But what if the shortcoming that’s causing this pain could be overcome? What if the self, rather than being a stable, predictable, bulwark-ish thing-like thing, is rather a deeply malleable, loose, water-esque, organism-like organism?
When I look back at changes I've made, a pattern emerges. First, my life is a disaster and finally once it gets bad enough in a symbolically noticeable kind of way, I admit I need to change. All the stupid crap about me I only value because it’s associated with me, my irrational pride to be able to say things along the lines of “I’m so great and no one loves me” melts away. I at last see my rags for what they are, weigh them accurately and I become ready to throw them off.
Then I get curious and I start asking hard, urgent questions: what happened? Why? And I dig into the nitty gritty of the answers in a kind of fearless and lucid way previously denied me.
In writing this, I’m asking: how does one go from the “normal” state of being attached to the self even if it is causing one trouble, to being willing to throw it off and make a concerted go of it?
This is the true mystery. Of the parts of this process, this is the one on which I have the least to put forward. The social sciences are largely silent on it, as is the therapeutic literature other than to suggest it’s a waiting and sitting with the client process that may or may not bear fruit.
One of the tiny areas in which there is something to speak of, and that matches my experience is of “rock bottom”1. Hearing that term is probably comforting to exactly no one, but there it is. As Alexander mentioned in a recent post, tricking yourself into thinking your life has become unmanageable and great effort is required is really hard if not impossible (there is no reliable means of this we know of). And even if possible, would one want it? Because it seems like that would involve throwing off your “compass” and clouding up the doors of perception. In general you want your perceptions to be a reasonable approximation of what is - it’s hard to navigate a road you don’t see clearly, and with a car whose capabilities you don’t know. Trick yourself here, and you may fall victim to other tricks that are not so beneficial.
But the problem with rock bottom is that it’s not very actionable advice. How to hit rock bottom without killing yourself or doing irreversible damage is not a simple matter. And of course there’s no guarantee that it’s going to bear fruit. It’s nothing if not risky. Although sometimes in the long run it may be the less risky choice, however dangerous is appears.
My own rock bottom story started with me on a Xanax and a beer and on my way home in my unregistered uninsured car with stolen plates. Followed by looking up to suddenly see flashing lights in my rearview mirror.
I’d always suspected that moment would come, and often the question crossed my mind as to what I’d do - but I had no answer and so my mind would drift elsewhere.
Until I found myself with no choice but to decide. Between losing my license, getting a shitload of fines and trying to manage life carless in suburban NJ or putting myself at the mercy of the chaotic possibilities of the chase and perhaps the Law, but also potentially getting off clean. The costly safe choice versus the all or nothing one.
I picked the latter.
And I hit my rock bottom.
And I bounced back.
And about a year ago early in the pandemic I hit rock bottom again. In much less dramatic or interesting fashion - just a bottoming out, in slow motion, such as happens every day to so many.
But both times, what was remarkable was the effect of it. When I made that decision to jam my foot down on the gas, my whole body relaxed. Despite being in a high speed chase, I was at peace. A burden was lifted. I felt free - whatever came, came. I at last had made a decision that felt like my own, at last a meaningful moment had come. I had bought the Xanax because I was anxious all the time (and it was the closest thing to heroin that didn’t kill me). About everything. And suddenly it was all gone. I couldn’t give two fucks.
Of course that didn’t last. That was followed by a series of up and downs - the latter particularly as I waded through all the fun legal stuff for almost a year. But then at last I got sentenced, got the handcuffs put on me, and again, after the shock and sadness passed - peace returned.
Which also was proceeded again by a series of ups and downs. But less rocky, and the pattern was a two step forward 1 step back kind of momentum, that continued almost unabated for many years.
Which I’ve experienced again this time around. Once you start rising from nothing, the dynamic tends to shift. Momentum is very much a thing. Which reminds me of an anecdote from a rando I caught on TV one bored afternoon.
As they say - “from the mouth of babes” - occasionally even the most prolific liars are caught telling the truth. This clip is worth listening to (bookmark through 22:37):
The irony is that as of this writing, dude has totally lost his momentum. Indeed maybe his concern about momentum is partially why he went so crazy about losing and leaned so hard into denying and trying to overturn the results. Perhaps a reflection that few key things in life are not, to some extent, a two-edged sword.
But the image of a sad old business man sitting in the corner in a swanky party and a young Donald Trump ignoring everyone else and approaching him and asking him this blunt question is striking, as is his blunt answer.
Rock bottom gifts you a strong symbolic experience in your history which you can always look back to as a comparison with where you are, and inevitably you come out encouraged. One of my fellow parolees would often mention how he put his prison jumpsuit on his wall to always have a reminder of where he came from. Honestly, I should have done the same. Enough time passes, and your comparison self shifts from the low point to whatever the highest point post-floor was, which happened to me. Such is the danger of the heights.
But how to achieve the heights of rock bottom is the question before us now. Nietzsche used to say, “if a friend is falling, push him”.
May I suggest that friends like Nietzsche, those capable of tough love and the kindness of precisely aimed and timed cruelty - of stabs in the front are a singular asset in any attempt to turn one’s life around.
Carl Whitaker is a singular example in this regard, and this clip is a notable example of such a principle at work.
[The context is that of a family in the middle of a one-session consultation with Dr. Carl Whitaker after failing to make progress after 16 sessions with their primary therapist. The presenting problem is “out of control” children, a significant contributing factor of which is (according to the therapist) the death of their father a year and 3 months ago. “I’m not sure that anyone’s really dealt with that death," says the mother at one point.]
This is a difficult clip to watch. Those early moments seem needlessly cruel, and certainly awkward. It’s easy to start questioning him. But then at 47:38, her denials stop, the feigned ignorance goes away, her tone of voice changes, the smile to hide the pain goes away for a time and the temperature in the room shifts. Shit has gotten real.
For this is how honest dialogue works. So much of what is most vital and central to us we will never say right out. He had to show he cared, that he knows about people, that he wouldn’t put up with lies - that everyday poses have no place here.
If he was not as direct, as persistent, would she have said what she said there? I highly doubt it. Also note that when she did answer, the phrasing of the question left little room for denial. He told a joke, then shifted back: “But seriously though… you have any sense of when you decided to…. self-destruct by over-eating?” Note the well-placed pauses, the refusal to frame the situation in genteel terms.
This is not the needless egotistical cruelty of trying to get her to admit he’s right - he’s trying to get somewhere, which requires some considerations of the real problems.
She later asked him where he saw things were headed. His immediate answer? “Death”. But she would have never asked that question had they never got where they did. And the stakes and real motivations and issues would have remained obscured.
Now at least they have a shot.2
What the hell is a rock bottom? Sometimes one’s entire life is a rock bottom, but one can’t see it. Because we’re dense, silly creatures. And also because rock bottom is an idea - was I really in rock bottom in prison? Of course not - absolute rock bottom is somewhere no one comes back from. It’s just a really bad situation and moment that has symbolic meaning, that can be meaningfully compared to a previous better state.
And dialogue can go a long way towards highlighting that contrast, which we can be blind to because we live with ourselves. The higher our “rock bottom” the better for us - another argument for holding ourselves to high standards. Although there is likely an upper limit to how “not bad” a rock bottom experience can be.
So those who can and will tell us when we go wrong, who in the words of an OG bunkmate “tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear” help. So that when you begin to slip, when you do need to change, you won’t be the only person who sees it (if indeed you've maintained the integrity to be able to). And being told helps:
And not only reward the good, but who are not afraid of challenging when necessary.
And to go back a moment to therapy, too often modern therapists play the role of glorified buddy, often incapable of asking even the most modest difficult questions. Or of doing much emotionally beyond empathy (often a necessary but insufficient tool).
The most memorable moment I ever had in therapy was when a therapist exploded at me (in a calmly voiced but clearly upset way) after many weeks of me reading aloud long passages from various books (usually dense academic ones) that I thought “got at” some of the issues I was dealing with and their larger cause. I wish I remembered her exact words, but it had a profound effect on me for many years. Essentially - as I recall - she felt that I was talking down to her and she felt invisible.
And I was shocked. Indeed, the moments in my life where I’ve been truly surprised by someone’s reaction to me is quite small, but this was one of them. I can be obtuse about how my actions affect others, and I generally underestimate the degree of influence I have - and this revealed it in a gut kind of way. That what I didn’t think was anything had made her so upset shook me. And in a good way. If she had kept that all in, and maintained the stereotypical therapist posture, it would’ve been as impotent as most therapy is now. Her anger, and her sharing it with me, was a gift.
On the other side of things, Whitaker once said that the best part of having a therapist was that it was someone one could “safely hate on” (and learn it won't destroy them). Therapy as a whole is arguably most effective when it - particularly in the long run - contains emotions that are unacceptable in everyday life. That can serve as a catalyst to changes in life outside - because at base change always has a strong affective component. And rarely those of merely the pleasant and fluffy variety.
And of course one of the best ways to get difficult raw emotions involved is to involve the family. Change - when it does happen - almost always happens quicker and is most lasting in family or couples therapy than in individual therapy. Because when it works, the individuals in the family begin to grow each other in a kind of upward spiral.
So consider bringing a friend/sibling/rando and find a blunt therapist who will call one or both of you an icebox. And maybe get a sense of who you really are, and where you are really at. If therapy is anything at all, it will be an experience.
Experience is the only way we ever learn anything, so if you’re only engaging in “mere” verbiage, then you’re just wasting time.
Of course while I’m entirely serious about the above, I also realize few will do it. The default is powerful and it’s difficult and challenging to attempt to adapt the world to oneself, and indeed the human. Our systems suck, as do our norms.
But this is just the beginning of the conversation. I was intending to complete this meditation on switching to change “mode” in a single post, but there’s much more to discuss, the time is nigh and my candle is burning low.
Until next time.
Some further suggested reading:
-Hitting rock bottom? Resource loss as a predictor of alcoholism treatment completion
-Quantum Change: Ten Years Later
-Hitting Rock Bottom After Job Loss: Bouncing Back to Create a New Positive Work Identity
The best quality research akin to this is on post-traumatic growth, although trauma≠rock bottom (necessarily at least), but many of these studies measure how bad the trauma was (i.e. the first cancer study compared responses to more and less aggressive cancers):
-Post-Traumatic Growth as Positive Personality Change: Challenges, Opportunities and Recommendations
-When Acute Adversity Improves Psychological Health: A Social-Contextual Framework
The reactions of the younger child are particularly of interest to me. He has a rather sullen stone-face look on his face and his body language is often like he’s bored. But this is a kid whose father would take him into a room, lock the door and beat him so no one else could interrupt the blows. The same father who had recently died. What a horrid mix of emotions for such a young child to be facing - no wonder the mask. No fucking wonder.
But then around 59:54, observe the change when Whitaker gives him his handkerchief. Watch him wipe his nose, look at his watery eyes, and look at his smile. Look at his inner eyebrows rise. He’d been watching and listening and processing, though the water was still. Now it begins to bubble. The work is bearing fruit. And all in a single hour.